Manuel left me, and I stood in the forest for a moment before realizing I no longer felt the pressure of Jerith pushing on me. I hadn’t felt it ever since the mesahn had gone streaking off into the trees. Manuel had chased him away.
I was tired from my night out with Natalie the night before, and could feel the other dragons, the faint fading energy that flowed out from them, leaving me with an awareness of how that power shifted, drawn toward the vase. I tried to pull it back, shoving it toward the other dragons, and realized I could control it, if only for a little while. It would take focus on my part, and doing so meant I would be limited in my other abilities.
It might be necessary though. For the dragons to maintain the strength they needed, I might need to continue my effort so they could withstand whatever was taking place. As I made my way through the forest, there was something more I thought I could do. I needed Thomas’s help.
There was one way I could get it.
He might be distant, far too distant for me to reach, but not so much that I couldn’t feel for his connection to the dragon. That was what I needed to latch on to, the power I needed to find. I could focus on his dragon as I had felt it before. Could I somehow signal to the dragon?
Maybe I didn’t have to. The other dragons could do that for me.
I closed my eyes. His dragon was faint, distant from me. I imagined Thomas circling over the forest as he hunted for the Djarn. Using the connection I shared with the dragons, I let power flow out from me. It was a signal. Nothing more than that.
There was nothing else for me to do but wait. Get to the city. Figure out what I needed to do next. Find the other dragons. Trust that Manuel would reach the king and convince him.
I reached the edge of the city, the dragon pens in the distance. The green dragon was there, pressed up against the bars of the pen, looking at me. There was almost something in his eyes that looked as if he understood what I was doing and what help I might need. If only I could release the green dragon to help me with my hunt, but I feared that if I did that, it would attract the wrong kind of attention.
My gaze was drawn to the Academy. I should be there, studying, working with others, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to find these dragons—and until I did, there was nothing else I was willing to do.
I swept along the edge of the city, searching, but did not find anything. I worried that if I waited too long, there would be no time remaining. And yet, there was also the danger of not waiting long enough. There were others who could possibly cause a danger to me.
As the day progressed, I found myself drawn toward the Academy again. I headed through the halls, my heart hammering, and searched for any of the instructors who might provide me with answers, but I didn't find any. Every so often, I felt something far away from me.
I needed to return to the dragon pen. That was where I had to go.
I started toward the city and paused as I moved past the pen. Cara was there, one hand gripping the bars, another holding a small canister, power coming from her and going into one of the dragons. I marveled at the nature of the power that flowed out of her. I wasn’t expecting her to be quite so potent with the dragons. When I had been around before, I had only known Brandel to be the one to have any sort of strength. This was more than what I had detected from Brandel, and certainly, more than I had detected from Cara in the past.
It was a surge of power, a pulsing of energy that seemed beyond what she was capable of. It rivaled what I had felt from most of the instructors at the Academy, for that matter. She should not have been able to call upon that much power.
Something was off.
She looked over at me, sneering as I jogged past her.
There came a surge from the green dragon that exploded within me, almost as if the dragon wanted me to turn back. When I did, I frowned. There was something wrong.
There was only Cara and the enormous power she commanded; it cycled out of her connected to a pale blue dragon resting on the ground, not far from the bars of the dragon pen, and then . . .
Then there was a hiccup. A pause.
That was what the dragon wanted me to know about. He wanted me to be aware that something happened here. He needed for me to recognize Cara was responsible.
I headed back toward her. “What’s going on, Cara?”
She looked over to me, glaring. “Mind your own business, Ashan.”
I looked through the bars of the pen, feeling the power coming off of the pale blue dragon, the way it poured through Cara then faded. It dissipated as she used it.
Stored.
“That’s a beautiful dragon there,” I said, looking at the pale blue dragon. “Powerful, too.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I can feel it.” I turned to her. “Just like I can feel what you’re doing.”
“What exactly do you think I’m doing?”
I nodded to the blue dragon. “Where is it?”
What I knew of Cara came back to me.
She, along with Brandel and several others, had trained with Elaine.
That had to matter.
She glowered at me. “Where is what? Honestly, Ashan, you people from the Wilds are all alike. Ignorant.”
I forced a smile. “Maybe. But I don’t have to be that intelligent to feel what’s going on here. You’re doing something to the dragon.”
The green dragon slipped over to the blue
